In the horror genre, when a house
stands out as a primary component, it is often going to be haunted.
In The Old Dark
House, however, director James Whale
uses a house in a different, more rewarding way: as a metaphor for
the psyche. Things like seldom-visited rooms, locked
closets, and at-odds inhabitants provide rich ground for such use.
The fact that these elements succeed in achieving a level creepiness
on par with that of your average haunted house film says something
rather unsettling about the way our heads work. The
Old Dark House is
a house-as-head movie that examines repression, fear, and the
role of the new, constructed with the
adeptness one would expect from the great James Whale.

Three travelers - a married
couple, Philip and Margaret Waverton, and their friend Roger Penderel
-- have been caught in a torrential storm and,
seeking shelter, find themselves as guests in the mansion of a
particularly dysfunctional family. The
house belongs to a man named Horace Femm, who occupies it with his
mute butler Morgan, his ostensibly deaf sister Rebecca, and, we soon
learn, two others: their father, Sir Roderick, who lives upstairs on
the verge of death, and their brother Saul, who is kept locked away
due to his arsonist-homicidal tendencies. Soon after, two
additional stranded travelers arrive: Sir William Porterhouse, a man
who lives up to his name in every way, and his mistress-sans-sex,
Gladys Perkins, a woman who is openly involved with Porterhouse
purely for the money. During the night of their stay in the
old, dark Femm house, these five visitors, as well as those who live
in the house, will all experience the shock of
change, ignited by the most repressed of the household.

The psychological metaphor is
constructed with a firm foundation.
Rebecca personifies the superego, operating
as if she is the authority of the household. She listens
to others neither literally nor figuratively and is always
quick to bark half-heeded orders and admonishment,
even to un-provoking guests. Most often
these orders relate to physical and spiritual safety. All of her
energy is devoted to telling others how they should
be. Morgan
is a definite portrayal of the id. He is prone to drinking,
destruction, and attempts at upheaving
the household's status quo. Furthermore, he cannot speak
and thus remains an unexplainable entity, forever unable to provide a
reason for his actions. It is fitting that he is played by Boris
Karloff, who just one year before played another id-character: the
monster in Frankenstein
(also directed by Whale). In the middle sits
Horace, the ego, simple self-awareness.
Horace is a man tortured by the
opposing sides of his psyche even while he rejects them.
Most of his actions seem either responsive to his superego (Rebecca)
and id (Morgan) or, towards strangers, passive (allowing just anyone
to eat his food and spend the night in his mansion, for example). He
is pleasant and carefree, except for when it comes to his family.
With this setup, the script falls naturally
into place.

Interestingly, what Horace fears
most of all is not Morgan, the id itself, but the evil that the id is
capable of releasing, Saul. It is Morgan who takes care of
Saul, the crazy brother banished to his room for life, a room that
Horace is not willing even to approach, and it is Morgan who holds
the key to the room. Saul is eventually freed from his room,
and what ensues eventually leads to the film's understanding of
conflict as a vehicle to peace and contentment. Upon release,
he causes precisely the havoc that it was warned he would attempt.

In the end,
Penderel stops Saul from burning the house down, and Saul is
eventually killed in a fall that ensues during a scuffle between the
two. Morgan essentially disappears, presumably to his quarters
of the house. Rebecca
loses her authority and resorts to scowling at Philip and
Margaret from a window, frustrated with their
sexuality. All of this
follows the psyche metaphor by illustrating the power of introduction
of new ideas, and the film becomes an observation of the ability of
outside influences to diminish the power of the id and superego.
Through the tempest of the night's events, Horace's fears have been
cleared away. The next day he
is bright and cheerful, just as the new day is bright and sunny, as
if nothing but a cleansing had occurred. In The Old Dark
House, motivation and happiness are dependent upon more than the
inner-workings of the psyche; they rely also upon
flanking, alien ideas. For years, Horace had been locked up
with little more than the superego and id to keep him company, and by
the looks of things, those years were
gloomy at best. With the arrival of a few visitors, he is able
to purge himself of that misery.

Because of
the metaphorical nature of The Old Dark
House, the plot is able to meander with
no real destination and still remain interesting. For the most part,
the characters walk about the house and converse with each other,
each word containing some degree of meaning because each character is
important. There is rarely the sense that there will even be a
climax, though we do eventually get one. Occasionally something
slightly foreboding happens, such as Philip and Margaret's
conversation with Sir Roderick, to retain some level of tension.
This lack of overt linearity in the plot gives the film a natural
feel, like we are watching people simply going about their business
in a slightly abnormal situation, as opposed to characters proceeding
through calculated events.

On the
more concrete side of things, I would be remiss not to mention the
film's two most well-known actors: Boris Karloff and Ernest
Thesiger. Boris Karloff is the first actor listed in the
opening credits (in all caps no less) and is even the subject of an
introductory producer's note, but his role as Morgan the mad butler
is nothing more than supporting. Nevertheless, he plays it
perfectly. From his first appearance, a slow reveal through an
opening door, his demeanor is always depraved. Even when he
serves Horace, Rebecca, and their guests at dinner, his slight hunch,
emotionless face, and uncaring eyes fully characterize him as someone
who has been rejected from even his immediate family's affairs.

By contrast, Ernest Thesiger
provides a so-so performance here. The actor often does too
much to make it perfectly clear that he is always at the influence of
his sources of shame and fear. When Rebecca admonishes him for
disrespecting her stringent devotion to Christianity, he cowers and
looks up like a scolded puppy. Later, when he is basically
forced to fetch a lamp that has been stored near Saul's room, he
lies and says that it's too heavy for him, that Philip should get
it instead. Philip asks if it will be too heavy to carry by
himself, and Thesiger's character responds, "Oh, no, not at all.
It's quite light, really." Caught in his lie, he widens his
eyes, makes an "O" with his lips, and puts his hand to his mouth
(go ahead, do the same right now while reading this review, and
you'll likely get a feel for how silly it looks), demonstrating not
the actions of a frightened man but of a naughty child. The
rest of his performance is adequate and less cartoonish but nothing
of the quality we would see three years
later in Whale's Bride of
Frankenstein.

The Old Dark House is not
very scary. In fact, most of its horror elements are internal,
relying on a response from the characters rather than the audience.
Its success as a film lies not in evoking feelings of fear or
repulsion but in examining psychological make-up through a
metaphor. It may in fact be best classified as a drama, since
it relies mostly on characters' interactions
with one another. More than anything, this film is
well-written. One could almost teach it in an English class.
If only teachers were so cool.

Comments

To me, the most interesting thing about watching The Old Dark House was realizing I was watching the progenitor of all the "motorists get stuck and make the mistake of going to the nearby house" movies made since. I sat there thinking "This was the forerunner of Rocky Horror Picture Show *and* Texas Chainsaw Massacre..."